Kensington Street Spice Alley

Kensington Street Spice Alley

Kensington Street adjoining Fraser’s Central Park is opening this week and it’s a rather impressive area purpose built into the heart of Chippendale and part of Kensington Street that impressed is their rather wonderful Kopi-tiam (coffee shop) Spice Alley which plays host to a range of Asian street food stalls – There is Alex Lee Kitchen – asian/singaporean/malaysian. Old Jim Kee – also Malaysian with sweets, longan drinks and curry puffs, Bang Luck Thai Street Food and Hong Kong Diner. There’s little crannies in there all lit at night with hanging lanterns and the feel is quite special in a sorta of backlane, hidden streets sort of way. You’ll be wandering around in glee.

It’s a bit manufactured of course and developer greencliff threw money into this and it is impressive in its scope and scale. On the main stretch of Kensington street are various shops including a bar – Bar Chinois. Their Liquor license is about 6 weeks off and they’ll be serving modern australian cafe styled eats til the time when they can dish up cocktails. There are also a homeware store, a cafe/coffeeshop and then forthcoming in the future is Masterchef alum Reynold’s future Patisserie shop

A look at the main street and the inside of the food street. Above is the 4 stalls here.

From Alex Lee Kitchen – we had Roti and Hainan Chicken Rice. They’re both done very well and considering the brands here at Kensington Street – all unknowns to the sydney asian foodscene. Impressive.

Bang Luck Thai Street food had 2 large pots of thai green curry on the stove and we had their pad thai. Expect standard thai fare – its all here.

Old Jim Kee seemed to be Malaysian also with Char Keow Teoy, Mee Goreng, curry puffs and springs rolls on offer. Serves are generous and we really liked the food from here. Congee above is from Hong Kong Diner

At the Hong Kong street food end of Asia is Hong Kong Diner. There’s Dim Sum, Congee, vegetarion Fried Rice (their spelling) and we had their dry noodles with slow cooked beef brisket and tendon – which was really quite tasty, plenty of flavour in there. Hong Kong Diner is also the only stall with their own little eating space above which is an appealing looking area in which to dine.

Wander around a little and you’ll spot PokLol. With their open faced wrap filled with yummy koreanish fillings, Poklol is also at Kensington Street albeit in popup form. We expect them to lock in a venue soon.

Masterchef alum Reynolds Poernomo had a stall here at the KS launch. He was off to Indonesia but the Poernomo family was all here manning their stall.

Various happenings around the venue – these are so in effect at tonights Beams Festival.

As we previously mentioned Bar Chinois is also here but sans liquour license and at the launch, they’re serving up Creme Brulee, mocktails and a chocolate mousse dessert.

There’s plenty to check out at Kensington Street. How exciting is Spice Alley? We can’t wait to come back over the coming weeks. This is kind of a big deal. So delicious too.